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INTRODUCTION

SHAKESPEARE's Sonnets were first printed in 1609, Early with the following title-page :

SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNETS. | Neuer before Imprinted. AT LONDON. BY G. Eld for T. T., and are to be solde by William Aspley. | 1609. |

In some copies 'John Wright, dwelling at Christchurch gate,' is named as the seller.

At the end of the Sonnets was printed A Lover's COMPLAINT.

In 1640 the great majority of the Sonnets were reissued (together with some of the poems from The Passionate Pilgrim and A Lover's Complaint and some pieces not by Shakespeare) in a volume entitled :

POEMS: WRITTEN | BY | WIL. SHAKE-SPEARE Gent. Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by John Benson, dwelling in | St Dunstans Churchyard. 1640.

The order of the Sonnets is here arbitrary, and Nos. XVIII, XIX, XLIII, LVI, LXXV, LXXVI, XCVI, and CXXVI are omitted. The eighteenth-century editors, Gildon (1710), Sewell (1725), Ewing (1771), and Evans (1775), followed this order.

Editions.

Of definite chronological data we have two only. Date of Composi(i) The Passionate Pilgrim, published in 1599, tion. contained, with trifling variations, the two Sonnets CXXXVIII and CXLIV.

(ii) Meres, in 1598, mentioned, as already familiar and celebrated, Shakespeare's 'sugred sonnets among his private friends.'

Love's Labour's Lost, published in the same year, contained two Sonnets, and Romeo and Juliet (pr. 1597) a third; none of these, however, appear in the collection of 1609.

All that can be inferred from these facts is that Shakespeare had written some sonnets by 1598.

Attempts have been made to supplement this very inadequate conclusion by inferences, more or less plausible, from particular passages. Thus (1) cvII 5, 'The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,' has been variously understood of the peace of Vervins in 1598, of the Essex plot against Elizabeth (1601), and of Elizabeth's death. Mr. Lee's parallels from her obituary literature leave little doubt that the last was the event referred to. (2) The reiterated declaration in ci f. that 'three years' had passed since the beginning of the friendship, and thus of the sonnet sequence itself, if we may accept it literally, in so far narrows the limits of possible date. (3) An allusion in the Avisa of Henry Willobie (1594) to a familiar friend of his, one 'W. S.,' as having 'not long before tried the courtesy of a like passion' [i.e. suffered from the cruelty of a mistress], and 'now newly recovered of the like infection,' has been thought to refer to Shakespeare and to the love-adventure which some of them reflect. This passage would go far to show' that the passion of the sonnets sprang more from Shakespeare's imagination than from his heart, had we any definite ground for identifying 'W. S.' with Shakespeare. But it is impossible to draw any inference from grounds so slight. (5) Numerous affinities of style and thought connect the Sonnets with the Poems and with a group of plays which can

be approximately dated. From 1590-97, Shakespeare's dramatic writing was influenced by lyric ideals of style, predominating in Love's Labour's Lost, the Midsummer-Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet. From 1597, this style rapidly gave way to the more nervous and masculine speech of the later Histories and Comedies. There is a strong presumption that the Sonnets-Shakespeare's consummate achievement in lyric poetry-belong to this period of pronounced lyrical energies. In particular, Sonnets I-XXVI have unmistakable affinities of style and motive with the Venus and Adonis.

of the

The first publisher of the Sonnets printed them, The as such collections were commonly printed, in a con- Sequence tinuous series, without any outward marks either Sonnets. of connexion or of division. Some critics have supposed the sequence to be wholly arbitrary. it is clear that there is at least one definite division, at CXXVI. All the Sonnets up to that point are addressed to a youth.) Of the remaining twenty-eight, seventeen are addressed to the poet's mistress) and the majority of the rest utter his bitter reflections upon the fatuous passion she has inspired.) The fundamental situation is put with the utmost trenchancy in CXLIV :—

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.

The love of the 'worser spirit' is a love of despair, and the Sonnets inspired by it have a tragic intensity absent from the most despondent of the Sonnets of 'comfort.' The poet loves in spite of his best self, and his intellect is divorced from his love instead of, as in the finest of the earlier series, seeing with

The
Apparent
Story
of the
Sonnets.
I. The

First Series:
I-CXXVI.

love's eyes and finding in it and through it 'the meaning of all things that are.' Within a smaller compass it strikes more various notes. As it stands it seems devoid of continuity. Its fitful arrangement and spasmodic movement may be partly due to disturbance of the original order; as where two halfplayful pieces, cxxviii and cxxx, are interrupted by the stern solemnity of cxxIx; but it seems rather to reflect the tumult of impulses evoked by a passion in its nature anarchical.

In the first series, on the other hand, a certain continuity is unmistakable, and it is of a kind not at all suggestive of the editorial hand.1 The Sonnets form a succession of groups, some of which were probably continuous poetic epistles, closed with an 'envoy' (cf. XXXII, LV, LXXV, xcvi). The order of the several groups also seems by no means arbitrary. Displacement may be here and there suspected; 2 but on the whole they form a connected sequence, passing by delicate gradations through a rich compass of emotion.

The Sonnets of the opening group (I-XIV) betray the admirer rather than the friend. Their theme accords with their less personal tone. It is not so much in the interest of 'the man right fair' as of the beauty which he 'holds in lease' (XIII) that he bids

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